Some of Australia’s great leaders never made it to Canberra. Oh, what might have been

July 10, 2026 — 1:30pm

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A dullard Prime Minister mocked as the “nasal knight” will soon be replaced in Downing Street by a more swashbuckling former mayor known as the “King of the North”.

It is out with Sir Keir Starmer, a banal politician who, despite winning a mammoth parliamentary majority in 2024, almost instantly became a hate figure for British voters, and in with Andy Burnham, a jovial everyman with a popular touch. Westminster, which will soon have viewed five PMs in as many years, is being called “Rome on the Thames”, given the churn of national leadership that resembles Italy. A more accurate comparison, given the similarities between the political cultures of the two countries, is with Canberra during its coup capital phase.

In the 10 years since the Brexit referendum, Britain will have had seven different prime ministerships. Australia, from the final days of John Howard in 2007 to the ascent of Scott Morrison in 2018, had the same number.

UK politics, as I have written before in this masthead, has a long history of mimicking its Australian cousin. Tony Blair’s New Labour project was a reworking of the Third Way policies of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. When inflatable vessels packed with asylum seekers started crossing the English Channel, the slogan “Stop the Boats” found an echo in Downing Street. The Rwanda solution, a failed plan to relocate migrants to Africa, was modelled on John Howard’s Pacific Solution. Starmer, in one of his last........

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